“My sales have dropped, I need to prop them up”, is one of the most popular reasons for advertising today. This is true of advertisers across sectors, products and platforms.

Don’t get me wrong, advertising for this reason is totally legit, and more often than not, will lead to a bump in sales, if done well enough.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this thinking, it becomes a little myopic when there are other factors at play: is the advertiser always ‘reacting’ to the market situation? Does the advertiser have a larger thought while advertising? Do they speak in a uniform language across successive campaigns? Is this language in tune with the ethos of the brand?

Considering the big picture eliminates the need for asking some of these questions over and over again: ‘why’ I’m communicating, ‘what’ I’m going to say, ‘to whom’ am I going to say it, and ‘how’ am I going to get my message across.

And that, in the simplest of terms, is the difference between a tactical and a strategic approach. A strategic approach might (and does, more often than not) include a number of tactics. But the tactics all speak the same language, to the right kind of people, and collectively work towards achieving strategic goals. If an advertiser doesn’t have strategic goals, then tactics are just band aids that one uses to react to market conditions.

For example, if the position a certain e-commerce player wishes to occupy is that of ‘lowest prices on all products’, then a series of campaigns on sales or special discounts, or pricing related communication, is all legit and is a set of tactics that are part of a larger strategy. But if the same organization wants to be seen as, say ‘the provider of the best quality products’, then the same tactics may get it a bump in sales, but will chip away at the intended position. Over a period of time, people will come to think of the company as one providing cheap products, and will therefore be willing to switch to other competitors when their prices are lower.

Marketing communication today has lower barriers to entry than ever before. Technically, on a few hundred Rupees a day, I can run a social media campaign. The people designing said campaign, need not be from a large creative agency. More often than not, they’re freelancers churning out exactly what is asked for. This low barrier has, on the one hand, helped visibility for a lot of smaller organisations that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to advertise. And on the other hand, has led to a glut of advertising and content marketing on social and search media.

Now, more than ever, there’s a need to stand out from the crowd. Thinking short-term tactics will give exactly those returns – short-term. Thinking strategy is not just good for smaller organisations or startups, it is practically non-negotiable. To be able to compete in a world of deep pockets, there is little choice but to have your long-term strategy thought out.